Finalist for award has ties to UNCW

Saturday

Apr 27, 2013 at 12:01 AM

'34 Pieces' nominated for SIBA Book Award

By Ben SteelmanBen.Steelman@StarNewsOnline.com

The creative writing department at the University of North Carolina Wilmington picked up another honor this month when the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance announced the nominees for its 2013 SIBA Book Awards.Carmen Rodrigues, who earned her MFA in creative writing at UNCW, was among four finalists in the “Young Adult” category for her novel “34 Pieces of You.” Published by Simon & Schuster, “34 Pieces of You” follows a teenager’s overdose as friends try to get to the facts behind her death. Virtually the only clues are cryptic messages written on 34 scraps of paper, hidden in a box under the dead girl’s bed.The novel drew praise when it came out last fall. Publishers Weekly concluded that “clearly drawn characters and insights into one individual’s profound influence on the lives of those around her result in a haunting read,” while Booklist urged readers to “keep a box of tissues nearby.”An Ohio native now based in Los Angeles, Rodrigues credited UNCW’s MFA program in creative writing for much of her success. “It’s a fantastic program with wonderful professors and some of the best young writers in the country,” she told the StarNews in an interview last year. In acknowledgments to “34 Pieces,” she specifically thanked her UNCW faculty thesis advisers, Wendy Brenner, Clyde Edgerton and Robert Anthony Siegel.SIBA is an organization of independent bookstores in 11 Southeastern states. Nominees for its annual awards were chosen by a jury of booksellers. Winners are scheduled to be announced July 4.Two other SIBA nominees also had Wilmington ties. Jay Erskine Leutze, son of former UNCW Chancellor James Leutze, picked up a nonfiction nomination for his book “Stand Up That Mountain,” an account of community groups in Avery County battling plans for a quarry near the Blue Ridge Parkway. And Wiley Cash, who has in-laws in this area, was a fiction finalist for his debut novel “A Land More Kind Than Home.”All in all, it was a good year for Tar Heels. North Carolinians Ben Fountain (“Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk”) and Ron Rash (“The Cove”) were SIBA finalists in the fiction category. Charlotte novelist Judy Goldman’s memoir “Losing My Sister” was also a nonfiction finalist. “Descent” by former North Carolina poet laureate Kathryn Stripling Byer was a finalist in poetry.